


Better

by grossferatu



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Animal Transformation, Canon Typical Consent Issues, Fix-It of Sorts, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Has ADHD, M/M, Memory Alteration, Men in love, Monster Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Post Season/Series 05 AU, Psychological Distress, Stuttering, Trans Male Character, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Whump, canon typical whump, couples therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:55:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27605210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grossferatu/pseuds/grossferatu
Summary: After defeating Jonah Magnus and kicking him off his Panopticon, Martin has the life he always wanted.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 27
Kudos: 44





	1. The Archive, Forgetful

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: Jealousy, distress, stuttering, implied body horror, memory loss, relationship conflict.  
> AU tags difficult to stick in the actual tags: therapist Helen/Michael, dog Daisy Tonner

His tea is too hot, burning his throat on the way down. As it settles in the pit of his stomach, Martin feels himself have trouble breathing, and in his haste to pour himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the counter, he knocks the hot teacup with his hand, sending it tumbling to the ground. It shatters before he can react. He has to force himself to place the half-filled water glass on the counter without slamming it. He stands stock still. He needs to find all the pieces of broken pottery on the ground before he moves, or else he could cut the skin of his feet.

It takes him a moment to realize that he hadn’t said anything when he flinched, any noise he himself could make overwhelmed in his head by the waterfall noise of breaking.

He needs Jon to bring him the broom, he thinks. He can’t go get the broom himself, or he’ll hurt his feet. He stands, patiently, waiting for Jon to find him. It takes him longer than he’d care to admit to remember that Jon doesn’t just _know_ when bad things are happening to him, anymore, and that he might not have heard the teacup from his office.

Martin speaks, finally, opening his mouth to cry out, “Jon! Jon, I need you in the kitchen.”

He’s about to call again when he hears the familiar sound of Jon’s two feet and one cane gait hurrying down the hall. Jon stops in the doorway, noticing Martin’s strange position by the cupboard and the broken cup at the same time.

“Are you alright?” Jon asks, the lines around his eyes deepening in worry. “Do you want the broom or the vacuum, I can start—”

“Just the broom,” Martin interrupts. He’s still startled, and that makes him curt. “Don’t want to hurt myself.”

Jon nods. “Of course. I’ll bring you socks.” His concerned expression doesn’t go away. “Are you sure you’re alright, this is the second—”

“Yes!” Martin looks away from Jon. He doesn’t like looking at the cane. “I’m fine. Just… distracted.”

“Anniversary of your mum’s death?” Jon ventures with a sympathetic expression. “I always get antsy when it’s time to visit my grandmother’s grave.”

“How do you know?” Martin asks. It’s unfair of him. Jon blinks at him, confused.

“It’s an important date for you. Of course I remember it.” A frown tugs at the corner of his mouth as he goes to the broom closet and hands Martin the one with the small bristles that comes with a snap-on dustpan. “I’ll go back to my office,” he says.

He’s in the same doorway he entered through when Martin reaches out with the hand holding the dustpan. “Wait!” he says. “Do you want some tea?”

The kettle will have cooled down by now, at least.

Jon shakes his head. “I’m alright but thank you.” He shuts the kitchen door behind himself, leaving Martin to stare at the broken shards.

Martin shakes himself. There really isn’t anything wrong with him, anniversary of his mum’s death or no. He just has to be careful.

He’ll bring Jon some coffee, later.

-

Jon remembers the socks as he crosses the threshold of his office and sighs. He’d meant to stop by their bedroom, but the thought had completely slipped his mind.

He turns and heads to his room, running into Daisy on his way. The mutt wags her tail at him, before bumping her head against his knee. “I need to bring Dad some socks,” he tells the dog, stooping down to scratch behind her ears. She’s gotten very good at not upsetting his cane, which she appreciates. As much as he appreciates how Daisy sometimes crashes around the house, breaking his and Martin’s frequent silences, he also appreciates having his feet planted firmly underneath his body. “And you can’t follow me into the kitchen, either, or you’ll hurt your feet, and no one wants to spend the time pulling pottery shards out of your paws, least of all you.” He ruffles her fur again, and she huffs breathily at him, before wandering off in the direction of one the toys she’s stashed under the laundry hamper.

He remembers what he needs to do long enough to grab the socks, go downstairs, and enter the kitchen, but then the reason why he’s holding socks evaporates, and he watches Martin sweep for a long moment before saying, “Oh! Right, Martin, here. Put these on. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Martin smiles at him, but the expression is pained in a way that makes Jon’s heart clench. Something has been bothering his husband, something more than the anniversary of a long-ago death. “Thank you,” Martin says. “How goes the grading?”

Jon shrugs. “The same. I’m lucky, this year—most of my students already know how to write.” He answers Martin’s smile, before turning away.

Daisy appears in front of him again, and he gives the dog a stern look. “You can’t go in there, don’t you remember what I said?”

She barks, once, and deposits her toy—a giant squeaky spider Martin hates but Jon thinks is hilarious—at his feet. She walks pointedly in the direction of the front door. “You want to go out?” he asks.

Recognizing the word “out,” she barks again and runs in a circle. She disappears long enough to fetch her leash, and Jon marvels, as he always does, at how lucky they are to have such a smart dog.

“Good girl!” he praises, giving her another scratch behind her ears. He would give her a treat, but he doesn’t happen to have any on him at the moment.

He should probably keep grading—he’s got enough students that looking through every paper is a chore, and he tries to have a fast turnaround for their sakes—but he would much rather take Daisy for a walk, so in a moment of spontaneous self-indulgence, he hooks the leash to his dog’s collar and lets her tug him out the door.

-

By the time Martin’s made sure there aren’t any shards left, he’s noticed Jon’s taken Daisy out for a walk, and hopes that he remembered to take his mobile.

Jon doesn’t have memory problems, exactly, he just loses track of objects and the occasional train of thought. It’s better, now that he’s on his medication. It’s a miracle they’d managed to get him an ADHD diagnosis at his age, and Martin’s proud of him. Pissed off, as he often is, at the doctors they have to deal with, but proud.

The emotion dampens as he remembers the other possible reason why Jon might be having memory problems, but he pushes that thought down. Jon’s always been neuroatypical. This is just what he was like before anything spooky got a hold of him, and Martin loves him. That’s more than enough.

He busies himself with mundane household tidying as he waits for Jon to return.

-

Jon calls himself asexual, now, and bisexual, with a humorous tilt of his head. “Of course,” he clarifies to a friend of theirs, “the second part is purely theoretical.”

Martin ignores the curl of jealous satisfaction he feels at the confirmation that in this new life of theirs, Georgie never existed. Jon and Martin have only ever been with each other, as far back as Jon can remember.

He kisses the corner of Martin’s mouth and wanders off to entertain one of their other friends. Martin has trouble keeping their names straight in his head. They don’t matter, not like Jon matters, or their dog.

Jon had suggested the name Daisy, and Martin had worried for a moment that this meant he remembered, but no. It was just the flower she’d had in her teeth when Jon had found her.

The vet has told them she has an intensely high prey drive, to keep her on the leash when they walk her, but Jon’s strength isn’t what it used to be, and sometimes he’ll just let her run out in front of him and catch things. Never cats, but mice, or birds, or the odd rabbit. Jon will just stand there, leaning on his cane, and watch her kill and eat whatever it is. He’ll call her back when she’s done, and she’ll let him grab the leash, and they’ll keep walking.

Martin doesn’t walk Daisy often.

-

They have a couple’s therapist.

Jon knows Martin is keeping _something_ from him. He’s also the sort of person who talks a lot about facilitated healthy communication and mutual openness, so it seems reasonable to get professional help for their relationship. Jon loves him. He doesn’t want to be with anyone else, can’t picture that in his head, but he hates the feeling that sometimes Martin looks at him like he’s a stranger.

When Jon initially suggests it, Martin looks slapped, which makes Jon lean back on his cane. “What?”

“You know—?” Martin hesitates on the word, like he’s waiting for a punchline at his expense.

Jon blinks. “You’re been irritable for weeks, now,” he says. “It can’t just be your mother’s death. This is worse than that.” He tugs at the sleeve of his tweed jacket. “Is it something I did?” He wouldn’t be surprised. This is his only relationship, and even after decades he stumbles sometimes.

Martin pinches his lips together and shakes his head. “No,” he says. He shakes his head again. “Yeah, couples’ therapy sounds like a good idea.”

-

Dr. Shelley dresses in gorgeous, bright androgyny, its long limbs and curly hair stuffed in a jumbled suit-dress combination that looks like it sewed itself. It greets Jon and Martin in the waiting room with a toothy smile.

“So!” it says, settling itself in its chair. “What’s wrong with your relationship?”

The friends they’d gotten the recommendation from had mentioned Dr. Shelley is blunt. Jon smiles. He appreciates the direct question.

“Martin doesn’t trust me,” Jon says, because at this point, he’s bone-tired and can’t find it in himself to care when his husband flinches and looks away.

“Jon, that’s not _true_ ,” Martin protests. “It’s just that everyone has secrets.” Jon, for the first time since he can really remember, feels genuine, boiling anger clog his throat.

“You don’t come on walks with us anymore. You barely talk to me, and when you do, you just… look at me. Like I’m missing something.” He shakes his head, thinking of the way Martin avoids Daisy. He looks away from Martin suddenly, as though he’s been burned, and flushes. “Is this… is this why you won’t look at me naked anymore?”

Jon has never been particularly self-conscious about the pox scars that dot his skin. Martin hadn’t seemed to care much either until recently. That’s why Jon’s sure something’s wrong. Martin’s changed, and with it, their entire relationship.

Martin flinches ago. “No, Jon, no, you’re not…” He looks anywhere other than at Dr. Shelley. “It’s not your fault.”

“Are you worried about money?” Jon’s mind tortures him, sometimes, choosing a topic to turn over and over and over, and that has been Martin, now, ever since Daisy’s arrival.

Martin shakes his head. “No, of course not, if I was, I’d be looking for a job…” He shakes himself, and Jon wonders if he’s thinking back to the same thing Jon is. “It’s just… you know why I don’t go on walks with you anymore, yeah?”

Jon shakes his head. This is new, too, this tendency of Martin’s to assume Jon knows things. Martin knows that Jon’s problem is the exact opposite, that he has short term memory problems, and yet he gets angry at holes he’s always known about. “No,” he says. “I don’t know anything you haven’t told me.”

Martin relaxes, and Jon has to look away.

Dr. Shelley is being very patient. Jon thinks that he would have interrupted already, were he in its position.

“I don’t go on walks with you because you always take Daisy, and…” He trails off, and inhales sharply. “Jon just… watches her kill things. Doesn’t do anything about it.”

Dr. Shelley nods. “Daisy is a dog, yes?” it asks, and writes something down. “Not a toddler, or otherwise human?”

Martin nods. “She’s a rescue. She’s extremely clever and is in most ways a dream dog as long as you keep her entertained, but she… she really likes hunting.” He sneaks a look at Jon. “Jon doesn’t try to stop her. He just… watches her.”

Dr. Shelley writes something else down, absorbing this. Gaze flicking towards the cane Jon has leaned against his chair, he asks, “Forgive me, Jon, but you aren’t particularly physically robust, are you?” It pulls up a pant-leg, showing off a brace that, like its clothes, is decorated with eye-searingly bright colors. “I only ask because I cannot imagine it would be easy for you to haul back on the leash without losing your balance.”

Jon nods, more relieved than he can say that their therapist seems to _get_ what it means to need an extra limb or so. “As strong as my upper body is, that doesn’t help me if my legs give out, you know?” he says, praying Martin won’t try to say anything supportive. “And I don’t have a full range of motion in my right hand, so it’s just… easier… to let go of the leash.” He shrugs. “I can’t help but admire our dog, either.”

That gets the doctor’s interest. “Oh?”

“She knows exactly what she’s doing when she hunts. She has a task, and she knows how to carry that out. She knows… she knows her purpose.” He laughs, softly. “I don’t know mine. It’s nice to experience that certainty, even if only vicariously through a dog.”

Martin looks horrified. “You shouldn’t—”

Jon shrugs. “You don’t walk with us. You could hold the leash, but you don’t.”

Dr. Shelley seems to be staring at both of them at once, an effect that is almost pleasantly disconcerting.

“We feed her more than enough.” Jon wishes Martin would look at him. “Do you… enjoy… watching her kill small animals?”

“Now, Martin, that’s an unfair question,” Dr. Shelley interrupts, before Jon can get his thoughts together in one piece. “He’s already given you the necessary information, and if you’re driving at some kind of hoped-for answer, the polite thing to do is to just be forthright.” It smiles. “What do you really mean to ask?”

Jon can’t read the emotions flicking across Martin’s face. He sounds far away when he asks, “Jon, are you a voyeur?”

Jon is more confused than hurt, most of the sticky anger in his throat evaporating in favor of bewilderment. “Yes. Martin, you know that. We talked about this years ago, when we were figuring out what bits of sex we were both interested in. I like to watch. I’ve always liked to watch.”

Martin looks like he’s been kicked, and Jon feels like something’s grabbed his heart in a tight fist and squeezed. “But… she kills them, Jon.”

Jon flushes, and his stutter, the one he’d worked on for decades with Martin’s calming presence at his side, returns in with full force, sticking his words behind his teeth as he struggles to breath. “W-well, yes, but there’s… I can’t _do_ anything. I-I can’t… I can’t not walk her, and sh-she’s always so… so so so much more settled af-when we’re done.” Jon searches Martin’s face, scrambling to understand why he’s suddenly so caught up in issues they’d resolved ages ago, early in their marriage. Doesn’t Martin remember?

Martin’s sense of internal continuity has the regularity of a digital clock, each number ticking over precisely when it ought to. Jon is the ancient, grandfatherly wind-up, a memory like a sieve for all the things his brain doesn’t latch onto like Daisy on the hunt, like a steel trap for those things that matter to him, like the micro expressions Martin makes when he watches Jon masturbate, or the internal rubric he has for what it means to write a good paper he keeps failing to lay out usefully for his students, as much as he tries.

He looks at Dr. Shelley, who watches them both with an expression of calm interest. That settles him, the knowledge that as much as he feels in this moment like his husband is a stranger, at least someone is taking notes. At least there will be a _record_. He needs to ask Dr. Shelley if it could record these sessions, or at least send him the notes. He needs to _know_ what’s been said here, more than he can just by trusting his own memory.

Martin stares at his hands, which draws Jon’s gaze to them. He’s obsessed with his husband’s hands, normally, preferring to look at them instead of his face. He’ll take them into his mouth, sometimes, or let Martin finger him. He likes having pieces of Martin inside him. He dreams, sometimes, about opening his chest and letting Martin settle there, despite the size difference.

He told Martin about the dreams when they started. He’d found them sweet, and very in character, but agreed that it was an impracticable, albeit nice, fantasy.

“You… don’t care,” Martin says.

“I don’t seek it out. I don’t sic her on anything. I just… watch. I _like_ watching, active, passive,” he cracks a nervous smile. “Middle.” He realizes he’s grabbed his cane and is holding it tightly enough that his knuckles are white. He forces himself to relax. “You find it charming.”

“I do?” Martin seems genuinely surprised, and he squints, as though checking a notecard. “Yes, I suppose I do.” He shakes his shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension in the room. He looks at Dr. Shelley, and he looks almost happy again. It still hurts to look at him, but he’s not beholding Jon like a bad wound anymore. “I’m sorry to end this so abruptly, but I need some time alone. I’ll be leaving, now.”

He walks over to the door and hesitates in front of the doorknob, as though confused by it, before letting himself out.

“Well,” Dr. Shelley says. “That was rude of him. I believe this may have made things worse.”

Jon exhales shakily. “I don’t know,” he says. “At least now I know _something_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was born out of spite. I saw a tweet saying that the fandom was owed an ending where, quote, "Martin and Jon kick Jonah Magnus off the Panopticon and adopt a dog." As someone who is very pro-Apocalypse and a big fan of Elias, this made me sad. 
> 
> I have, in time, grown fond of this little fic. It will continue, but I want you to understand from the beginning that the current state of affairs cannot continue. Jon's life as it is is unsustainable.
> 
> I'm curious what you think of Daisy?


	2. The Archive, Remembered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon never intended to be unfaithful to Martin. 
> 
> Jonah doesn't care much about intentions, only results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this chapter, Jon is ostensibly cis, and Jonah is trans.

Jon assumes Martin is home when he returns because the lights he remembers turning off are on. In fact, the whole house is lit up, each switch flicked meticulously on, even the single lightbulb in the back of the coat closet on a pull-string.

“Martin!” he calls, turning off that light. The old style bulb hurts his eyes, makes him see too much of the back of the closet. “We need to talk.”

The figure sitting in the kitchen, one leg crossed over the other, eyes fixed on the little owl statuette above the microwave, is not Martin. He is short, with wavy red-brown hair down to his shoulders, and he’s wearing a green jacket over a black button up. High cheekbones dotted with freckles make him look younger than the age hinted at by the streaks of grey at his temples, and his full lips are painted an even darker green than his clothes.

“Hello, Jon,” the man says, and Jon shuts the kitchen door behind him. For reasons he can’t quite articulate, he doesn’t want Daisy to come in. “Don’t worry about the dog, she has already decided she hates me and has summarily banished herself to the other side of the house.” He looks admiringly around the kitchen, before flicking his moss-green gaze to Jon. “You don’t know me.”

“No,” Jon says. He finds himself strangely unwilling to kick the man out of his house, especially since Martin is not here. His gaze is not comforting, exactly, but it is tangible in a way that makes him ache. “I do not.”

“I am,” and he smiles smugly, as though this were a great announcement, “Jonah Magnus. In the flesh, as it were, though I really don’t think this is the most attractive voice I’ve ever had.” His accent is violently upper-class, the kind that Martin would immediately hate. Jon sits at the table across from him.

“Have we met?” Jon asks, wracking his memory. Jonah Magnus is certainly memorably dressed, and the kind of aesthetically attractive that sticks in Jon’s head even after he’s forgotten a person’s name. He could be a colleague—the university is large enough that there are whole departments he barely knows—but that seems unlikely.

Jonah nods. “Yes,” he says. “Well, not quite. You’ve never seen _me_ before.”

Jon rubs his face. “You’re speaking in riddles,” he says. “You don’t seem like a housebreaker.”

Jonah pulls a face like an offended cat. “Absolutely not, if I were going to simply steal your property I would be already gone. How was therapy?”

“Odd,” Jon says. He should be surprised that Jonah knows that’s where he’s come from, but there’s something familiar about the feeling that those green eyes can see into his head. “I had to remind him… I had to remind him that he likes me.” He still doesn’t know how he feels about that. “I’m sorry the dog hates you, she’s… picky.”

Jonah shrugs. “I know.” He looks down at his fingernails, also painted green. “This is much more difficult than I anticipated.”

“What is?”

“Seducing you, of course.” He rolls his eyes. “You really don’t remember the name Magnus? My name?”

Jon stares at him. “Martin and I are monogamous,” he says, because it’s the only thing he can think of to say. He doesn’t say that it won’t work because Jon doesn’t find people who aren’t Martin attractive anyway, because that’s not true. Just looking at Jonah makes a knot of something like hunger tie itself in Jon’s belly, and he doesn’t understand. Not exactly.

“I’m sure that’s working out for you,” Jonah says. He stands up, holding himself too close to Jon’s space. “How long has it been since he’s touched you?”

“I think you know,” Jon says. “Somehow, you know.”

Jonah takes this as a cue to press himself against Jon’s front. He doesn’t wrap his arms around him, instead pressing both hands between their chests, settling himself as though he’s expecting Jon to return the hug.

Jon hesitates. “Wait,” he says, but doesn’t move away, and Jonah looks up at him.

“You’re lonely, and I’m warm enough,” Jonah says. There’s a bitter tinge to his voice that disappears as soon as Jon notices it. “You’ll remember why you find me appealing at all soon, I’m sure.”

“I can’t… i-if you lean on me too hard, I’ll fall over,” Jon says, stuttering his way into pure logistics. He wants, out of a dim sense of decorum, or loyalty to Martin, to tell the man currently burrowing into his sternum to get out, but…

But Jonah Magnus is _here_ , and he is warm enough, and green. He is green even when Jon doesn’t look at him, like the dreams he used to have.

“We don’t have to be standing,” Jonah says. He uncurls, slightly. “It’s hard to ride you in this position.”

After so long with Martin, Jon isn’t as ashamed as he used to be about what he says in response. “I don’t… I don’t really _get_ hard when other people are involved?” He shrugs. “So I can’t exactly…”

Jonah sighs. “What the point if he’s not—” he mutters to himself, but he smiles up at Jon. “I don’t care,” he says. “I’m just more interested in things being _inside_ me than what it is.” He rubs his face, breaking his almost supernatural cool for a moment. “Seducing you is both more difficult and much easier than anticipated.”

Jon barks out a laugh. “Excuse me?”

The shorter man waves his hands irritably. “You’re going for it, but now I need to figure the…” He moves to grab Jon by the arm and thinks better of it. “Follow me. I know where your guest room is.”

This is, Jon supposes, as he thumps after Jonah, the point where he has the option to do something else. Leave the house, call Martin, do what his husband accused him of getting off on and sic the dog on someone. 

Instead, he locks the guest bedroom door behind them both and brings his hands up to his shirt buttons before freezing. The scarring is worse on his chest, especially over where he’d had to have a damaged rib removed years earlier. Will Jonah, who is the first person Jon has found attractive other than Martin in decades, be as repulsed as Martin has become?

He doesn’t want to risk it.

Jonah sprawls his own clothing across the guest bedroom, leaving on a thin undershirt and his trousers. Like this, Jon can look at his shape, and _that_ is familiar. How they fit together when Jonah pulls him down on to the bed is familiar too, and he feels himself collapse into the other man’s touch, his mind going pleasantly buzzy around the edges as fingers drag through his long hair.

“I’m glad you still have the scars,” Jonah says, though his voice has lost some of the smugness in favor of an odd breathlessness. “Even if they have other reasons.”

He kisses Jon’s bad hand, before moving up his body to kiss the hollow of his throat as he unbuttons his shirt.

“Don’t—” Jon starts. “You won’t like what you’ll see.”

Jonah ignores him, and Jon notices his expression has changed. His gaze is hungry, and he smiles when he finds the surgery scar over Jon’s ribs. “I like _everything_ about you, Jon,” Jonah says, and in his mouth it sounds like he’s staking a claim.

Jon shivers, surprised when he feels his cock twitch against his thigh. It’s nowhere near hard, but he can feel it, the arousal curling in his gut, sparking from where Jonah touches him with his eyes and hands, and with that almost arousal comes something like a memory.

He is asexual, obviously, but he does feel attraction. He’s just never been attracted to _humans_.

“Jonah—” he gasps, and like a light turning on under his eyelids he is starving, the emptiness spreading from his belly through his whole body. “What—”

“She was a horrible person,” Jonah says. There’s a missing antecedent, but Jon’s mind supplies a woman on her wedding day, her smile hiding something unpleasant. “She justified it to herself with all the lives she would save, but she was a horrible person. She would have died eventually, you know. No good thing lasts forever.”

The picture in Jon’s head gains detail; a catastrophic slip in the shower, a life extinguished in exchanged for five, no three, no two more years, an acceleration of death. The food—and it is food, as much as it is words Jonah mutters into Jon’s shoulder—is stale, something he already ate years ago, but it is more than nothing.

His fills out against the seam of his trousers as Jonah begins to describe the greedy woman’s domain, lost souls at her mercy, her never sated hunger. He and Martin had missed that one in their single-minded focus on Elias.

“Wait!” Jon says, blinking rapidly. “Jonah, why are you Jonah?” At least the eyes are familiar, grounding, even if they’re in an unfamiliar skull. “What happened to Elias?”

“He died,” Jonah says. “Do you remember, finally?”

Jon shakes his head. He remembers flashes, now, a kaleidoscope of another life metastasizing into his memories. He knows, at least, why he is hungry.

“What happened to Elias?” he repeats, and there is familiar power behind the words, and Elias, no, Jonah spasms above him, his eyes squeezing shut in apparent pleasure.

“Oh, _Jon_ ,” he sighs, like a thread being pulled from an old sweater. “You killed me.” He smirks as Jon, surprising himself, moans, and lets Jonah undo his fly. “It was very heroic, really. Martin thinks it was the fall, but no, it was the shock.” He frees Jon’s cock, momentarily puzzled by its presence, and continues. “You’re not supposed to see the inside of your own head.” He pulls down Jon’s foreskin, making him wince. “By the time I was picking myself back up, Martin’d already decided to try and shove everything back in the box.” He licks at Jon’s glans experimentally, before pulling a face, ignoring how Jon squirms underneath him. “I suppose he wouldn’t think of it,” he mutters to himself, and stops pinching the skin

“What?” It’s hard to speak, suddenly. Jon supposes it’s mostly because an attractive man is straddling him and playing with his dick like a particularly annoying cat toy, but also because that _answer_ —that knowledge about Elias’s death, even if he’s still not quite sure who Elias was—fills part of the hollow ache inside him, making him feel less like skin grown around a void.

“I haven’t fucked anyone who’s still got his foreskin in… well.” He pauses, mid-stroke, to think. “Extra skin to work with, and it’s been a while _anyway_.” He scowls, and tightens his grip, which makes Jon swear at the sudden intensity of sensation. “Peter’s a large manul now. Put a bit of a damper in our marriage, although I suppose I appreciate he’s around at all.” He leans down, crushing his hand and Jon’s dick slightly between their bodies, and whispers. “You killed him, too.” 

The memory crashes into Jon’s mind like the sea, free of context, and he comes with a confused shout, the intensity of his own remembered strength pushing him over the edge.

“Sorry,” he mutters, flushing, but Jonah’s rearranged himself again so he can lick the head of Jon’s cock, ignoring Jon’s protestations until he realizes that he’s still hard. “Wait,” Jon says. “That’s not how that works.” He’s perpetually baffled by his own cock, but he knows he has a refractory period, and he’s never been particularly easy to arouse, even when he was younger.

Jonah licks a stripe down the underside of Jon’s cock and sits back up, smirking. His lipstick is now half-off, meaning Jon’s probably stained slightly green in all sorts of interesting places. “Finally,” Jonah says. He’s ignoring Jon, again, instead working at his own fly.

The tangle of dark red hair draws Jon’s attention, but before he can even really move his arms, Jonah is easing himself down on Jon’s cock.

“I told you it’d be easier to ride you lying down,” Jonah says, and Jon freezes.

“Don’t—” he starts, something squeezing uncomfortably in his chest at the clanging dissonance in his head at having his cock inside someone. It feels good, yes, especially as Jonah sets a slow pace, the warm heat sending pleasure signals up his spine, but it’s also _wrong_. He shouldn’t be able to do this, not with this much sensation, not with his own dick.

It’s that dissonance, more than the hunger, more than the shards of memories swirling around in his head, that makes him remember what he is. He grabs Jonah’s arms and bucks him off as best he can, flipping them around so he’s on top, so he can pull himself out. “No,” he says. “That’s not how we work.”

He hopes, for a moment, that his dick will shrink to the size he’s used to, now that he remembers, but no, it’s still there and hard between his legs, pressed against Jonah’s stomach.

Jonah once more looks at Jon like he’s beholding the sun. “My Archive,” he whispers. “It worked.”

Jon lets himself put his full weight down on top of Jonah and groans. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck,” he repeats, more urgently, and he realizes he’s shaking with something like grief. “I’m crying, aren’t I?”

Jonah replies by licking at his eyes the best he can, but he’s stuck, so his best in this moment isn’t that good. “Yes,” he says.

Jon rolls off Jonah and onto his side, curling in on himself. He’s surprised when Jonah wraps his arms around him, pressing their mostly still clothed bodies together. At least the surge of emotion has killed his physical arousal, even if he’s still unfathomably hungry.

He chuckles darkly to himself. Well, no. He knows exactly how hungry he is. He can remember that sort of thing, now.

“I wonder what Martin thought I would be like?” he asks aloud, and he nearly slams his head against the bedpost nearest to him as he acquires the information, the starving eye more than happy to feed him anything, having been so long deprived. “Y’know,” he says, conversationally, as he feels Jonah’s arms tighten around him. “I think, if he hadn’t been so obviously upset, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Really?” Jonah sounds surprised.

“My memories are full of a genuinely idyllic relationship. Hell,” Jon snorts, going through them, “Martin and I seem to have worked out our personality conflicts fifteen years ago, and we’ve been married for _twenty_. He’s made us a full decade older than we were, when the world changed. It’s just… well. I am myself. And he expected something else of me, and maybe even of himself.” He sighs. “Can you stay until he comes home?”

“Why?” Jonah asks.

“I’m tired,” Jon says. “And this is a Lonely place. I don’t want to be alone.”

-

Martin finds Jon curled up around another man in their guest room and his heart stops. He doesn’t recognize the other man at all, which doesn’t mean much. He’s been putting less and less effort into remembering their friends.

Jon wakes up first, and he has the good grace to look guilty, but he doesn’t zip up his trousers or panic or even apologize, not at first. He just stares back at Martin, clutching at the smaller man in his arms like a stuffed animal.

“I’m sorry, Martin,” he says, finally. “He likes looking at me.”

That wakes the other man up, and Martin can’t quite blame Jon for finding him pleasing to look at, at least, even if the idea of Jon falling into bed with anyone breaks two lifetime’s worth of assumptions about him. That doesn’t stop Martin from feeling angry, however, and he glares at the stranger. “What the _fuck_ , Jon?”

“He said what he said,” the stranger says primly. He seems to have dressed himself at some point. He smiles at Martin. “I would shake your hand, but I should wash them first. More importantly, hello! My name is Jay. You are a terrible husband.” He doesn’t give Martin (or Jon) a chance to say anything else, leaving abruptly, grabbing his jacket on the way out the bedroom door.

Jon sits up. “It’s what it looks like,” he says.

Martin scoffs. “You don’t seem the type to cheat,” he says.

“I’m not,” Jon says. “I am sorry, but I think this was for the best.”

“Excuse me?” He can’t keep himself from looking at Jon’s messed up shirt, or at his cock, lying limp against his thigh.

Jon notices what he’s looking at and shoves it hastily back into his boxers. “Perhaps we should go to another session,” he says, his smile pained and a little brittle. “Jay… Jay doesn’t flinch when he looks at my chest,” he continues. “I can’t say the same for you, anymore.”

“You’re sleeping in here, tonight,” Martin says. He’s angry—of course he’s angry—but there’s nothing he can _do_ about it. This is his and Jon’s perfect world, the one made for them after they _won_. Leaving Jon—letting something as small as this get between them—would be giving up. It would be proving, in some awful cosmic way, that Peter was right about him.

Martin shakes himself off. This isn’t his domain, and he loves his husband. This is something couples go through. They’ll work it out.

They have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further notes on the topic of what is going on with Jon's gender. You can skip this if you don't want kind of spoilers for the rest of the fic. 
> 
> When Martin constructed this new world, he made himself and Jon his ideal versions of the two of them. And so, thinking that it would be helpful, he made Jon cis. What this actually means is Jon feels extremely dysphoric around his genitals, because he likes/is used to his trans masc on t junk. 
> 
> Peter is, in this universe, a large manul. Being dead has interesting repurrcussions.
> 
> Jokingly misgendering Jonah Magnus is transphobic, if you do that you're bad and should feel bad.


	3. The Archive, Emergent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long overdue conversations

The next time Jon takes Daisy for a walk, he holds the leash looped around his left hand, and he says, as soon as they are on the street, outside of the house, “What do you smell?”

She looks at him, and her barks are different.

It’s not that he can read her mind, now. He can ask her questions, and he knows her answers. Questions such as “Are you in there?” and “Are you hungry?”

Her answer to both is “Yes.”

Her answer to “Are you happy to be alive?” is “No,” but with caveats.

Now, he asks her, “Do you want to share?” and the answer is, “Yes.”

Before, before the change, before _this_ change, when he had the wherewithal to hunt and wasn’t behaving for Martin or Basira or himself, he would wander aimlessly until he saw someone. Now, he lets Daisy guide him through their suburb, until they find a young man. He is blond, and Jon does not recognize him.

His name is Bartholomew Christie and everyone he has ever loved is dead. It has been years, but he still sees them, and he cannot sell the house. It is too big, built for a wife and children and two dogs and his elderly parents. They are all dead, even the dogs.

He goes to pet Daisy and she topples him over, her large front paws on his chest.

“Hey!” he says, his voice thin and terrified. “Your dog, it’s—”

“I know,” Jon says, and waits until Daisy has her teeth bared to say, “Wait. Let me talk to him first.”

And so, he learns, and Bartholomew speaks, and satiation ripples in Jon’s gut. He settles himself next to the prone man and pets Daisy’s thick fur. It isn’t soft, exactly, but it sooths him. He does not want to be alone when he does this.

Many things have happened to Bartholomew since the world changed, most of them bad. The last bad thing that happens to Bartholomew is Daisy tearing his throat out as a man hoarsely thanks him. The last thing he sees before he sees nothing is a great eye, watching.

-

After Martin finds Jon in bed with another man, they go to couple’s therapy again.

Dr. Shelley is dressed in more subdued colors, and Jon’s expression takes on a strange cast as he looks at it. “Afternoon to you both,” it says, gesturing broadly to the two chairs. “I want Jon to tell me what happened.”

“I cheated on Martin,” Jon says, when he sits down. Martin does not hear any regret in his voice. “With a man named Jay. He was handsome, and he doesn’t flinch when he looks at my skin.” He shrugs. “That’s more than Martin can say.”

Martin clenches his hand into a tight fist on his thigh. “Excuse me,” he says. “That’s not reason to—” He thinks about how peaceful Jon had looked, asleep with his arms wrapped around Jay. He looks at Dr. Shelley. “Explain to him,” he says, finally. “Explain to him why it’s wrong.”

Dr. Shelley taps itself on the chin with its pen for a moment, before smiling faintly. “Infidelity is never appropriate,” it says, slowly. “However, in this instance, from our previous session, it seems quite clear that Jon does not feel sufficiently validated in your relationship. Would you agree with me?” It tilts its head curiously.

Now, Jon looks sad, an expression of naked hurt marring his features. “Yeah,” he says. “I love… I love you, Martin, but I don’t know you, anymore. You’re like a stranger to me.” He reaches his hands out in an abortive gesture. “It’s lonely.”

“You’re so…” Martin knows he’s going to sound petty, but he can’t help it. “You’re so happy with yourself. So pleased with our lives.”

“Of course, I am,” Jon says. “I have a good job, a husband who loves me, and a dog that came already house trained. Don’t worry. I Know you still love me.” Martin has to be imagining the emphasis. There’s no way Jon remembers. “I’m happy. I don’t understand why you’re not.”

Martin can’t explain without giving the game away, so he just sighs and looks away. “Sorry, Jon,” he says. “I feel like we’re wasting your time,” he says to Dr. Shelley. It smiles.

“Nonsense!” it says. “I think you are already making progress.” Its grin broadens, sharklike, at Jon. “You just both need to work on your honesty, and Jon, try to ask Martin’s permission next time, and maybe even listen if he says no.” It cackles, before thumping its hand against its chair. “I love you both so much already! You make quite the cute couple.”

-

Jon’s gone out for a rare walk without Daisy, so Martin feels comfortable following him. He’s not sure where he would be, but he can’t have walked far.

He finds Jon near the train station, talking to a younger man with windswept hair and narrow features. Bitter solitude radiates off of him in waves, and Martin might have made note of him for later if he was ever hungry in this new world. He isn’t, though, something he chalks up to this, their happy ending, so he’s just jealous. It’s hard not to be, he reasons with himself, after what he’s seen.

He’s not close enough to hear what they’re saying, but Jon laughs, leaning against his cane, and nods. The stranger walks off.

“Who was that?” Martin asks.

Jon smiles at him, accepting the kiss Martin presses to his lips. “Just one of our neighbors,” he says. “He and his husband live about three or four houses down, by the raspberry bushes. Pleasant enough to talk to.” He rolls his shoulders, and Martin hears the tell-tale clicking of a rough joint day. “Let’s go home,” Jon continues. “This has been a bit of a longer ramble than I expected.”

They’re down a block before Martin thinks anything of the encounter other than Jon being unusually gregarious. “Hold on,” he says. He stops walking. “What were you talking about?”

Jon shrugs. “Oh, he almost drowned in a well in his grandmother’s back field when he was a child, and the memory came back. I was just talking it through with him.”

Martin stares at him. “Wait. You didn’t. You—”

“Yes,” Jon says. “I did.”

-

Daisy knows who she is. In some ways, this is an improvement to how she was before her death; then, she only knew the Hunt and Basira, and how badly she wanted those two aspects of her life to combine into one. Now, she is Daisy.

She had thought Jon recognized her, but no, he smiled at her like she was a dog and pet her behind the ears. She enjoyed it, but it was still wrong, Jon Sims with only human memory behind his eyes, and only two eyes.

Her shape is that of a dog, barrel-chested and large pawed and sharp-toothed, and her thoughts fit themselves to their new shape. She hunts, pleased that Jon does not stop her, but only small things. There is nothing larger for her, here, in this home Martin has built for them. 

She has gone roaming once, and she never escaped the smoothly cared-for lawns mixed with small pockets of wilderness, overgrown roads melding into train tracks into marches into front lawns again. She had found herself back at the front gate of Jon and Martin’s house, Jon calling for her, frantic. He doesn’t know where she is.

He knows what she is, now, even as her understanding of time unspools itself, and he crouches down in front of her, bad hand clutched to his chest, and asks, “Are you in there, Daisy?”

He knows the answer before she can lick his face, but she does so anyway. He smiles fondly, and says, “I haven’t forgiven you for kidnapping me, but we can resolve that later.”

She sticks her tongue in his ear, and he flinches back, laughing. She can’t really kidnap anything right now, except maybe a rabbit, and she’d rather eat one of those than play with it too much. He pulls a face, but doesn’t pull away until she’s satisfied he’s gotten her point.

He brings Martin home, and the man looks at her differently. He doesn’t like her, much, she’s too wild and fond of eating small mammals, but now he’s almost fond, and he apologizes before petting the thick fur along her spine. She thwaps him with her tail, irritated at the change in behavior. She doesn’t have enough context to know what it could mean, and she does not want him to leave Jon. That would make Jon miserable, and this shape makes her very unhappy when people she likes are sad.

“He knows who you are, Daisy,” Jon says, and Daisy barks. Okay, she thinks, does that means he’ll join her and Jon hunting? Does that mean he’ll explain why he doesn’t seem to eat when Jon isn’t looking?

They’re both sitting on the floor next to her now, Jon with his legs splayed in the way that they are when he smells like joint pain. Jon is calmer, less anxious, than he has been in a long time. He still smells like fear—everything smells like fear, like the house always smells of dust and tracked-in dirt—but the undercurrent of paper and type-writer ink is back, a stronger version of when he’s grading papers or watching her hunt.

“I didn’t just want to fix you,” Martin snaps, breaking the silence. “I wanted to fix _everything_. Make sure there wasn’t any suffering. That was my happy ending. That’s what I thought this was!” He’s louder, taking up more space, stinking of desperation. “That’s what I deserve, after everything I’ve been through. It’s what you deserve, too.”

Jon is quiet when he says, “How do you know.” It’s just barely not a question, and even Daisy can tell he’s keeping himself from pulling answers out of Martin’s mouth. “I never asked for this.”

Martin freezes. “I didn’t have time to think through the details. I just wanted you to be happy. You deserve that.” He looks away from Jon. “If you can’t be happy with me—”

“I would not be happy with Jay,” Jon says. “Even though he looks at me.”

“You watch Daisy eat small animals,” Martin says. Daisy recognizes his upset tone of voice, but she doesn’t get it. “You fed from someone today.” His voice is almost as small as Jon’s.

“I was hungry,” Jon says. “At least I don’t say I’m sorry.”

Martin grimaces. “Don’t root around in my head.”

“I’m not,” Jon says. “I know you. Whether _who I am_ and _what I do_ can be separated from each other aside, we’re… us. I know you and I love you.”

Daisy remembers feeling the fondness she hears in his voice but tries to ignore that reminiscence. She doesn’t like thinking about Basira.

Martin sighs. “Right,” he says. “That’s it, then, I suppose. He won, and I couldn’t fix anything.” A beat of silence, and he continues. “Peter, I mean. Ending up alone, and all that.”

“You don’t seem particularly alone from where I’m sitting,” Jon says. He starts giggling, the noise incongruous after all the serious discussion. He sticks his hands under his armpits, gasping for breath, as amusement wracks his body.

“What?”

Jon barely manages enough air to speak. “Peter—he’s… well. He’s alive, yes, but I don’t think you could say he’s _won_. Daisy’s not the only animal friend.”

“You mean he--?”

“He’s a manul, Martin. Peter’s a cat that’s usually small, but he’s big.” Jon’s giggles subside eventually. “It’s why Jonah bothered tracking me down at all, I think.”

“I see,” Martin says.

“No,” Jon says. “That’s my job.”

Martin snorts. “You didn’t used to joke about it this much,” he says.

“I did,” Jon says. “You just don’t remember.” He places his hand over Martin’s. Daisy can barely feel it, his hand is so much smaller.

“I’m not the one—” Martin starts, but he stops himself. “Why didn’t it work?” he asks. He sounds close to tears. “After everything, I deserve peace.”

They’ve stopped petting Daisy entirely, their joined hands simply resting on her fur.

“It did work, Martin,” Jon says. “You made yourself _your_ perfect world. The rest of us were just along for the ride.”

“It felt like a punishment,” Martin says, after a long silence. “You being as—”

“Deformed as ever?” There’s a bitter edge to Jon’s voice. “I’m just what I’ve always been.”

“No!” Martin says. “Not… no. Of course not. You’re just—you’ve got scars where the worms ate you. You’re missing a rib. Your hand was burned. I changed _everything_ and none of it mattered.”

“I am lopsided,” Jon says, with an unreadable hand gesture that would probably make more sense if Daisy had hands.

This silence is less sad than the last one.

“ _What_?”

Martin is loud enough to make Daisy flinch.

“You got me a rib back. The one I kept for myself. I’m lopsided.” He’s smiling. “You didn’t fail, Martin. You have to understand that. I’m… me. Even without all my memories, even without part of my identity, you managed to keep me, well, _me_.” He winces. “Well, mostly. I suppose you were a little overzealous with your help in places.” At Martin’s silence he looks away, makes another hand gesture. “I don’t _like_ having a cock, Martin.” He rubs his face. “I can’t believe I have to say that out loud.”

“But…” Martin says. “You’re a man.”

“Yes,” Jon says. He sounds slightly bewildered. “I had a perfectly serviceable cock.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Martin says. “Mostly. That’s why—”

“It wasn’t self-sabotage, or anything like that. You wanted the best for me. And you… tried. The same way you built the rest of the world.” Jon sighs again. “I’m going to have to spell this out, aren’t I. I think you might get it but—”

“What?”

“The problem was never _what_ you did, Martin. It’s that you _didn’t ask_ and then you _lied_ to me, and you’d made sure I couldn’t tell. That’s why I’m upset. Not because my body’s to pieces—it’s always been to pieces. I’m upset enough to let Jonah _fucking_ Magnus into my bed because the man I love lied to me. For months.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There’s an even longer silence, but Martin’s smiling, and Daisy takes this as her cue to lick his face.

“Daisy, _stop_ ,” Martin shouts, flailing his arms at her. She dances away and watches them as they help each other stand, Jon leaning on Martin. “Jon, I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Promise me something, Martin,” Jon says. He curls his hands into the fabric of Martin’s jumper. “Don’t _ever_ lie to me again.” There’s an undercurrent of threat to his voice, and Daisy wags her tail, pleased. She likes how much Jon knows _exactly_ what he is.

“I won’t,” Martin says. “I promise.” For his part, he’s holding on tight enough to bruise.


End file.
